The emergency phone system in United States is now a very frequently used service. For example, a 911 call is made every 1.5 seconds just from cellular phones.
Unfortunately, the system has become bogged down from misuse and also from excessive good citizenry. It is estimated that a typical freeway accident will generate two dozen 911 calls. In each case a caller is being a good citizen yet is clogging up the system so other new calls cannot get through. It is very common with an overloaded system such as that found in Los Angeles County that calls are placed on hold and many calls are simply not answered.
In one well-publicized case a gang beating took place on a beach in broad daylight and citizens calling in were placed on hold as no 911 operator could take their call.
Thus, there is a need for an automated system that will sort through emergency calls and eliminate the redundant calls so that the operators will only deal with the true emergencies as well as the minimum number of calls for a given incident needed to dispatch appropriate rescue personnel to that incident.
Brozovich, xe2x80x9cLine-Based Public Safety Answering Point,xe2x80x9d (U.S. Pat. No. 5,311,569) teaches a basic PSAP with multiple operative stations.
Prnie, xe2x80x9cEmergency Call Answering System,xe2x80x9d (U.S. Pat. No. 4,052,569) teaches a PSAP in which the calls are allotted on a sequential basis to the various operators.
None of these systems teach an automated triage function. None of these systems teaches an interactive approach for dealing with the 911 congestion problem. Thus, there is a need for a public service answering point system that will perform a triage on incoming calls either fully automatically or with caller interaction.